Fernweh - Brian O'Conner

Chapter 9

Nadia's POV:

When we arrived where Dom is staying I set up a few things I would need for patching him up.
Brian and Dom sat next to each other on the table and Brian was watching me as I go behind Dom to check the bullet wound.
I cut the back of his shirt, where the wound is, and clean up his back, from the blood, with some cotton pads. After the wound was clean I looked for the bullet.
"The bullet's not in there." I walk back over to my first aid kit and tell Dom what I'm doing.
"I'm gonna clean it and stitch it up. It's gonna hurt."
"I bet you're gonna enjoy this." Dom says with a smile.
"A little." I say with a smile.

As I was stitching up Dom's shoulder Brian went to get Chinese as we had all agreed on that for dinner.
"There you go. All done." I tell Dom after I finished sorting out his back.
"Thank you. I would have had Mia do it but she isn't here."
"It's okay, I have medical training and that is what you first learn."
After a few minutes of silence Dom speaks up.
"Do I know you?" He looked confused but also like he was trying to place he knows me from.
"Yeah. Letty. She introduced us. I helped her out with the cars when you aren't around."
"You was Letty's friend." He realised.
"Yeah, we met once or twice. The first time was at a concert and the second , I think, was at your garage."
"You had a different accent, that's why I couldn't recognise you. I thought I knew you but your accent is different so I thought I imagined it."
"I changed my accent because I was undercover, having a Russian accent would have made me stand out more. Most of them have Spanish accents or American. I don't really look the part for the Spanish accent so I went for American. But I normally speak in my Russian accent."
"Then why aren't you now?"
"Because Brian has never heard me speak like that. When we met a few years ago, I was undercover as an English assistant to a drug lord. I never told him the truth but he figured some of it our on his own, now I am waiting for when he wants to talk about it."
"Then do it now."
"He isn't here."
"Not right this second but when he gets back and after we have eaten. I'll go out and leave you two alone to talk. I don't know anything about you but Letty trusted you so, I do too."
"Thank you, Dom." He nodded his head to me.
The door slammed open and Brian walked in with his hands filled with bags of Chinese food.
He had the keys in his mouth and shut the door with his foot.
Dom and I didn't move a muscle to help him, we just stayed in our seats looking at him. He came over to the table and dropped the food on it. He then took the keys out of his mouth and pith them in his back pocket.
"Thanks for the help." He says sarcastically.
"Your welcome." I say with a cheeky smile as I get up from my seat and rummage through the bags.
Brian takes a seat opposite Dom and I am in the middle of the two of them. Dom on the right and Brian on the left.
I hand out the food and leave the things to share in the middle of the table. We all dig into our food as we were starving, the only food we had was crappy snacks from a petrol station on the way here.
"Want some of this?" I ask either of them while pointing to one of the other boxes of food I got.
"Yeah." Dom says.
"It's spicy." I warn him but he doesn't seem fazed and takes some more out of the box.
"I like it hot."
We all ate our food, sharing our food with each other or trying it. I hadn't had a dinner like that in 5 years, with my family.
I miss them.

——————————

True to his word, after dinner Dom left the room and went to another. Brian and I were still sat at the table in silence, occasionally taking sips from our beers.
"Do you want to talk about it." Brian says, breaking the silence.
"Okay. What do you want to know?"
"Why'd you not tell me your real name?"
"When we met I was Nadine and it was easier to be her than it was to be me. When we went on our first date after everything with Verone, I wanted to tell you but I let my fear control me. I was scared that if I told you everything about me you would run the other way and I didn't want you to leave me. But I guess that backfired." I say with tears growing in my eyes.

I looked down at my hands in my lap, fiddling with them to try to distract myself from my emotions. I hadn't realised but as I was talking my American accent slipped and I was speaking my normal Russian accent.

Brian got out of his chair and bent down next to mine. He took my hands in his, I didn't realise he had done this until he was in front of me.
"I could never hate you. I only got pissed because I was afraid that you didn't love me. When I found out you had a different name and another life, I thought you might be using me. Or you had a whole other life that I wasn't a part of." Brian took a breath and squeezed my hands before continuing.
"But now I know that's not why you did it. At first my mind swam with thoughts about everything it could mean but they all sounded wrong. In all this time I realised that you hid it to protect me. But I don't need you to protect me, Nadia. I want to know everything about you, the good, the bad and the ugly. Because I love you." When Brian finished the room was silent. He never even mentioned the fact that my whole accent had changed.
"Please say something." Brian pleads.
"I love you, too." I whisper, slightly afraid that I had said that. I've never felt like this with anyone, what if we break up or something happens to him. But my bad thoughts are stopped when I look into his bright blue eyes.
"What?"
"I said I love you, Brian. I always have. Since we met at the house, since then I have been falling in love with you."
Brian's smile could light up a whole country, which makes me smile, too. His hands move up to cup my face and he leans forward pulling me into a soft but passionate kiss.
When we pull away we lean our foreheads against each other's.
"I love you, Nadia Volkov."
"I love you, Brian O'Conner — wait, you know my last name?" I say, completely ruining the moment.
Brian just laughs and pulls me out of the chair.
When we are both stood up he pulls me into a comforting hug. He leans his chin on top of my head, tucking my face into his chest. Not that I'm complaining, it's really comfortable.
"I did some digging but the only thing I could find is your name and what's with the accent." He says while we are hugging.
"It's my normal accent, I put on the others when I am undercover. And I deleted most of my past or as much of it as I could. However, I could never get rid of those hard copies or the missing reports, is that how you found out?"
"Yeah, I saw those. They said ' Dani March, kidnapped at 1 years old.' They presumed you dead a few years later."
"I know, I've looked. I could never find my birth parents, my kidnappers were too smart. They burned a lot of the things that had my name on it, like my birth certificate. But my parents got close to finding where I was so they sent assassins to kill them. I don't even know their names, Brian." I say with a sob. I push my head further into his chest and cry about the loss of my birth parents. Even though I never met them, it still hurts that I never will.
Our minute of peace and quiet was interrupted by Brian's phone ringing. He pulls out of our hug and picks it up off the table.
I looked over his shoulder and saw 'Letty' as the caller ID. It can't be Letty, she's dead and why would Brian have her number - Unless he was the one that put her in the cartel as an informant.
He must feel terrible about everything, like it's his fault.
Dom comes storming out of the room he was in and heads straight for Brian.
"Oh, shit. Hey, Dom"
"When were you going to tell me? When were you gonna tell me you were running Letty?"